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Olympics: Could melting Sochi host Summer Games someday?

Bloomberg

Posted:
02/14/2014 07:13:44 AM PST

Updated:
02/14/2014 08:23:20 PM PST

People take a ski lift past patches of snow at the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics, Tuesday, Feb. 11, 2014, in Krasnaya Polyana, Russia. Warm temperatures in the mountains was a factor in the cancellation of Women's downhill training on Tuesday. ((AP Photo/Christophe Ena))

Feb. 14 (Bloomberg) -- Sochi, suffering with sun and slushy snow this month's Olympics, is going to get warmer, according to a study that says the Russian resort will be among six Winter Games hosts that will be too hot by 2050 to host again.

As cross-country skiers stripped down to sleeveless suits in sunshine in Sochi yesterday, authors of the study by Canada's University of Waterloo and Austria's Management Center Innsbruck said this month's $44 billion Games will become unsuitable for elite alpine skiing if global carbon-dioxide emissions continue to push up temperatures at the same rate.

Sochi, which stockpiled snow from last winter to use in emergencies, is among ski resorts fighting a losing battle against rising temperatures around the world, according to the study. Germany's chances of hosting the Winter Games again are also receding with the Alpine venue of Garmisch-Partenkirchen also set to become unsuitable, according to Robert Steiger, one of the report's four authors.

"You could still have winter sports and skiing in Sochi in 10 or 20 years, because as tourists you can ski in slushy snow, but for athletes it's too risky," Steiger said by phone. Based on average temperatures over the last century, "it's the warmest of all former Olympic hosts."

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Since 2007, when Sochi was awarded the games by the International Olympic Committee, Russian companies have built 14 sports venues, including the main stadium, which can seat 40,000 people, and more than 19,000 hotel rooms, according to Russia's Construction Ministry. Russia is spending 1.53 trillion rubles ($44 billion) to host the games.

Skiers Crashed

Other former hosts that will become redundant as Winter Games hosts are France's Grenoble and Chamonix, California's Squaw Valley and Vancouver, which hosted the 2010 Olympics, according to the study, which was published last month.

The average February daytime high temperature for the 19 hosts since the inaugural 1924 event in Chamonix has increased from 0.4 degree to 7.8 degrees Celsius (46 degrees Fahrenheit), and will rise by about another two degrees by 2050, the study published found.

This week, in the cross-country ski sprint final, three of the six racers including Russia's Sergey Ustiugov crashed on a patch of slushy snow on a downhill turn. Organizers brought forward the start of the men's super combined downhill race an hour to 10 a.m. today to use colder snow.

To be sure, unseasonably warm weather has frequently "reared its ugly head" at the Winter Olympics, according to Daniel Scott, a professor at the University of Waterloo who co- authored the study, 'The Future of the Winter Olympics in a Warmer World.' Organizers bought insurance against refunding tickets for the 1924 games, when above-zero temperatures melted an outdoor ice-hockey rink, Scott said.

Too Muddy

The Austrian army carried snow in baskets on their backs to the slopes of the 1964 games in Innsbruck because the mountainous terrain was too muddy to use trucks, Scott said. Organizers of the Vancouver Games applied snow from 120 miles away to a base of straw bales to rebuild melting freestyle ski slopes, he added.

Sochi hasn't had the same bald patches without snow like Vancouver four years ago, Gilbert Felli, the IOC's executive director, told a news conference.

"So far it went very well, and I am very happy," Felli said.

Past venues that will be better equipped to stage the Winter Games again include St. Moritz, the Swiss resort that hosted them in 1928 and 1948, according to Steiger. Several other Russian sites would be more suitable than Sochi, such as in the Ural Mountains, he said.

Munich Bid

Germany may have to co-host the games with Austria or Switzerland as Garmisch-Partenkirchen, one of its highest resorts, becomes warmer, Scott said. Citizens in the southern German state of Bavaria on Nov. 10 voted against a bid by Munich to host the 2022 Winter Olympics following resistance from local groups who cited costs and environmental concerns as reasons for their opposition.

Sochi's best opportunity for another Winter Games may rest with a technology breakthrough, Steiger said.

"There could one day be purely artificial snow that doesn't melt and is made of plastic," Steiger said. "That hasn't been invented yet but it's an option."